Teachers are trying to explain 9/11 to students who don’t remember it very well — or at all. A variety of lesson ideas and resources are available, but most teachers are on their own, reports AP.

New York City’s updated Sept. 11 curriculum “includes tips on how to help students cope with learning about the horrors of that day, a study of the art inspired by the terrorist attacks and a history of the building of the 9/11 memorial.”

The Sept. 11 Education Trust also has come out with lesson plans. It was founded by Anthony Gardner, whose 30-year-old brother, died in the World Trade Center.

(Maryellen) Salamone said the loss of her husband “inspired me and I inspired the curriculum, and maybe the curriculum will inspire hundreds and thousands of kids. Then, one death will make a huge difference and I can sleep better at night.”

John Salamone, 37, died in the World Trade Center, leaving his wife and three young children.

Derrick Owings, a Cherry Hill High School West teacher will teach the 9/11 course to his ninth-grade world civilization classes and 11th- and 12th-grade psychology classes.

“We’ll look at the psychology of terrorism,” he said. “What makes a seemingly rational, mentally healthy human being into a terrorist?

“And from a world civilization side,” he said, “we’ll look at the history of human behavior through conflict and turmoil. One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot.”

Fordham’s Teaching about 9/11 in 2011 highlights “the danger of slighting history and patriotism in the rush to teach children about tolerance and multiculturalism.”

“What one wants to know, however, is whether the rest of the curriculum is there, too: the civics part, the history part, the harsher lessons about how difficult it is to safeguard American values from those who despise them in an increasingly menacing world,” Chester E. Finn Jr. writes in the introduction.

Some teaching materials are excellent, Finn believes, citing the National September 11 Memorial & Museum’s lessons for high school students, which are used in New York City. “Others, alas, are wimpy, biased, or apologetic and may well do teachers and pupils more harm than good.” Exhibit A: The U.S. Education Departent’s 9/11 Materials for Teachers.

On Sept. 10, 2001, Marilyn Anderson Rhames flew home to New York City, pas the Twin Towers. The next day, as she interviewed the grief-stricken for her newspaper, she decided to become a teacher, she writes in Ed Week.

. . . the shock and devastation of the terrorist attacks exposed the shallowness of everybody’s excuses for not pursuing their passions. . . . When I die, I remember thinking, I want to be around the people I love, doing the work that I love.

She returned to Chicago, earned a master’s degree in education and began her second career as a science teacher.

As we near the 10-year commemoration of the terrorist attacks, I am reminded of all those loved ones who died too soon, many still waiting to achieve their dreams. . . . I teach because I love children. I teach because I want to serve my country. I teach because I want my fragile, little life to somehow continue to have meaning when I am dead.

In shaping the minds of the next generation, “I honor the victims of the terror attacks each day I enter the classroom.”

An eighth-grade math teacher rattled a table to get students’ attention, say police in the wealthy Silicon Valley suburb of Atherton. A 13-year-old girl called 911 from the bathroom to accuse the teacher of throwing things and profanity. “I’m scared,” she said.

When police arrived on campus, they found John Haynes calmly running his class. Officers concluded Haynes had raised a desk a few inches off the ground and dropped it; the desk landed on its side. He’d raised his voice and used profanity, said Lt. Joe Wade.

Most of the students in the class weren’t bothered by the teacher’s actions, Sgt. Tim Lynch said. Though the teacher “dramatically” made his point, “it wasn’t a teacher out of control,” he added.